


Soliloquy

by charmandhex



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Minor Character Death, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 11:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16515272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmandhex/pseuds/charmandhex
Summary: Cycle 65. Lucretia's year alone.





	Soliloquy

            Lucretia wakes up on floor of the Starblaster, alone. Movement seems a bit out of reach, but she manages to turn her head and look out onto the world outside of the Starblaster.

            Oh. They’re on the ground, all barren gray rock and desolation. Right. The ship crashed. The ship was hit, and it crashed. Where are the others?

            The window is broken; it looks like they were all flung free. That’s going to leave a mark. But they’ll be fine. They’ve been through worse.

            It looks like the Starblaster fell under some kind of rock face, judging by the shadows that cross over the bridge of the ship. At least the muted lighting helps the pain in her head.

            Lucretia blinks. The world outside isn’t entirely colorless. Six splashes of red are far, far off from her. Her family. She has to get to them.

            Lucretia begins the struggle to get up. Before she can so much as lift herself to sitting, however, several sleek and strange ships land by those red spots. Blinking, Lucretia spots what appear to be cannons mounted to them. Her stomach, already a mess from the crash, begins churning even more violently.

            Humanoid figures pour out, with a sharp military set to them. And even at this distance, Lucretia gets the distinct impression that they are being none too careful with the red-garbed figures on the ground.

            No. She has to stop them. Has to get them back. Lucretia stays conscious long enough to see where the ships are headed.

 

* * *

 

            Lucretia wakes again with a gasp, destination already clear in her mind. Stomach heaving and mind whirling, she stumbles still off balance to the controls of the Starblaster.

            “Come on, come on,” Lucretia’s nimble fingers, so adept with her pens as she chronicled their stories and songs over the course of 64 years, tremble with doubt as she takes to the controls of the Starblaster, frantically trying to recall how her captain confidently brings the ship to life. _Why_ had she never taken the time to learn? _Why_ had she been so focused on writing down what waited for them out there that she had never bothered with what it took to bring them there? “Come on, come _on_!” Lucretia strikes upon the correct sequence, and the familiar hum of the bond engine surrounds her, soothing in the stark, gray, lifeless landscape of this world that is spread out before her. “Yes!” She cries, already half-mad with relief.

            Now. The ship can fly, but Lucretia still has no inkling, no shred of knowledge of how to fly it. Which means, she’ll need to get to the others, stage a rescue, get them back so they can all escape, so they can all fight through the hellscape of what Lucretia can confidently say, before the Light of Creation has even fallen, will be her least favorite plane.

            Lucretia starts in with the controls, the ship lurching and listing and occasionally whining as she struggles to makes heads or tails of what’s up and what’s down. She’s drawn Davenport at the helm enough times, Pan damn it, she _should_ be able to confidently move the massive hunk of metal that has kept them safe and carried them through these years.

            At last, at long last, after what seems like a full cycle of muttered curses from dozens of worlds and hands that shake still with nerves and fear, with wide eyes and brows narrowed in concentration, the ship begins to move forward, nowhere near as gracefully as when Davenport wills it, nor anywhere near as fast as the few occasions when Magnus has been roaring with laughter at the helm, but forward.

            And so Lucretia sets on her path, moving in the direction of the strange ships that flew like predators swimming through a still sky, carrying her friends, her family.

            She’s not there, possibly nowhere near, when it happens.

            The bond engine lets out a high-pitched whine that raises the hairs on the back of Lucretia’s neck and forearms and sets her teeth on edge. It’s familiar, painfully so, and it feels as though her heart lets out an echoing whine. From down the stairs, down the hall, Fisher sings out mournfully as well, a perfect match.

            Lucretia will not be escaping with all of her family; she will not see someone again until after they have fled this plane entirely. She doesn’t know who the sharp pain in her chest belongs to, but she won’t know until she gets there to save the others. Lucretia manages to set the Starblaster moving faster, ignoring the wobbles from engine and ship that always come with loss. They’re temporary. With the remainder reunited, the ship will stabilize, even as they mourn.

            She just has to be fast enough to save the others.

            She is not.

            Moments later, the bond engine lets out not a whine but a scream, far louder and more agonizing. And then the engine dies entirely.

            It feels like a vise encircles her heart, grabbing onto it and stopping it as well, as though it were turned to stone. Lucretia scarcely sees the gray, lifeless, _lifeless_ world in front of her as it approaches, at first slowly, then rapidly as the ship, and Lucretia with it, falls for a second time.

            Alone. Lucretia is alone. Alone at the start of the cycle. Alone in a hostile, cruel world. Alone.

            There’s another noise, equally as agonizing, perhaps even more so, but it doesn’t sound like the bond engine, which is just as lifeless as the surrounding world, just as lifeless as her family, and it doesn’t sound like Fisher. It takes Lucretia a few moments, a few beats of her yet still beating heart, to realize that it is her making that pained, mournful sound.

            Lucretia forces herself back up to standing from where she’s fallen, hunched over the wheel that Davenport stands at. She shifts her stance to something more solid and grounded, like Barry. She squares her shoulders, preparing for a fight, as she has seen Magnus do hundreds of times before. And she sets her jaw, determined to show no weakness to this unforgiving world, as Taako and Lup do before any strangers. The tears she struggles to hide are her own.

            And as Lucretia forces herself upward, forces herself onward, it seems the ship does the same. After a few whines of protest, a few half-started, half-strangled purrs of the engine, the Starblaster forces itself onward as well, the bonds that anchor Lucretia, and these bonds alone, powering the ship.

            She has to keep moving.

            This is the first realization. They have dealt with hostile planes before, more than a few times in fact. And the first thing that Davenport would say right now is that they have to keep moving, track the threats and stay well out of their paths. And if they’re following? Well, that’s all the more reason to move even faster.

            Lucretia immediately changes course, no longer following the path that her family had taken toward their deaths. She does not flee the way she came either. No, too easily tracked, especially with the crash landings the Starblaster has taken. Lucretia glances to the sides, to see more gray, lifeless terrain in either direction.

            Hands still shaking, but less than they were earlier, Lucretia turns the ship and sets off to the right.

 

* * *

 

            It’s several hours later that Lucretia hears a familiar alien noise, not the Starblaster, and certainly not her family, overhead. The other ships. Come back for her, no doubt. Why, she cannot be certain. She doesn’t need to be. She can practically feel Merle scowling behind her, hear him insisting that there is a time and a place for trust and for faith, and this is not it. The only faith she can afford is faith in herself, to get herself and the ship and Fisher and all of them out of this mess.

            Lucretia shifts her flight pattern, careful to fly low to the ground, where the bright silver of the Starblaster might be better hidden against the flat gray of the rock, but not so low that she risks scraping the hull and damaging the ship even further than what two crashes have done. She hears the ghost of Barry’s chuckle, Lup and Taako’s twin whispers of _Street Smarts._ An even fainter ghost of a smile crosses Lucretia’s face.

            She spies an outcropping of rocks. Good. The whir of the enemy alien ships is getting louder, closer, and growing in number. Hiding is good, will allow her some respite, at least until their numbers dissipate enough to allow her to escape unnoticed.

            Hiding will also allow her some time to assess the ship, determine how to address the sporadic and worrying shrieks of the bond engine that have also grown in number over the past few hours.

            Lucretia carefully, carefully steers the ship under the outcropping and sets it down. Davenport would be proud. And then promptly scold her for crashing the ship the first time she’d flown. _But still proud._ She can hear the smile in his voice.

            Lucretia goes first to Fisher, who lights up, nearly screaming as they see her. She frantically hushes them, as if that too might alert the officers to her location. “I know, I know.” She whispers, hands and forehead pressed flat against the tank of the glass. Six faces flash in front of her closed eyes, over and over and over again. There’s a hum from Fisher that turns to song, a faint trace of melody she’d nearly forgotten from their time in Legato. How different a world that was!

            Lucretia opens her eyes. Fisher is pressed as close to the glass as they can be, tendrils pressed up to meet her hands. They let out another reassuring hum when they notice her looking at them. Another ghost of a smile passes over her face.

            “Right,” She tells them, the sound of her own voice already as strange and unfamiliar to her as the world around her. That will have to change. “Time to go to work.”

            The ship is damaged; that much, Lucretia can readily tell. There are large gouges in the hull of the ship, the worst from the blast that took the ship down in the first place. At least it was mostly a storeroom that took the damage there. Nothing too critical. Nothing so damaging to the ship as the loss of her crew and the flickering bonds now held in place by Lucretia’s memory alone.

            But how to fix it? She ponders, forcing herself to work on the problem rather than fretting over the frequent flyovers of the ships overhead. From their height, the outcropping is probably barely detectable, at least not detectable enough that she can’t afford to wait here, just long enough to sort out the problem.

            The lab. _Closed toe shoes ONLY, and don’t touch anything dead or undead. Or just try not to touch anything._ She hears Barry’s voice, warning her against some of his work. But Barry isn’t here right now to keep her out, and Lucretia needs that same technology Barry, Taako, and Lup brought aboard from Cycle 17. And maybe that robotic arm Magnus attached as well.

            It _looks_ like all she needs to do here is patch the hole, so as to keep it from tearing any further and tearing the ship in two. So, ignoring how it feels as though her own heart has been torn into seven distinct pieces, Lucretia rifles through the scrap metal available from Taako’s various experiments in the lab, talking through an imagined conversation with Lup.

            _Now, Creesh. Creesh. Listen. You’ve gotta see that one isn’t a thing like the Starblaster. All wrong. If you try to stick that on, it’s not only going to look like a clown ship, it’s going to look like a clown ship crash landing._

            “I thought clowns were your whole aesthetic though?” Lucretia grunts as she moves one of the heavier pieces to the side. Student of the Power Bear, she is not.

            An imaginary Taako laughs. _Hell yeah, Cretia, roast her like she roasted my eyebrows._

_That was 53 cycles ago, Ko!_

_And they looked terrible the entire cycle! Okay, Cretia, listen, for real? You know this._

            Lucretia hesitates for a moment, before selecting a sheet of metal that feels firm and steady in her hands.

            “But how do I-”

            _Uh, MAGIC_. Both twins tell her in unison.

            Lucretia conjures up a small flame to weld the pieces into place, ignoring the pang in her still aching heart as she borrows Davenport’s welding helmet to do so.

 

* * *

 

            The Light falls, as it always does. And that’s reassuring, because this cycle will end. The brilliant white is a welcome change from the bleak landscape. Lucretia watches it fall silently, with tired eyes that have not seen much sleep in the few days since the loss of her family. She’s been too busy. After a few quick repairs and scarcely an hour’s rest, she’d awoken with a gasp (again) at the loud whirring nearly directly overhead and far, far too close.

            Luckily, with her heart racing and hands that scarcely trembled at all, she had won the sprint away from the officers’ ships.

            And since then it has been not a race, not a game of cat and mouse, but a cycle in and of itself, of Lucretia racing away from her pursuers, as intent on her capture and death as they’d been on her family’s; finding a place to hide; working through repairs to the ship; and snatching moments of rest and peace that are neither restful nor peaceful.

            Flying, with the engine again screaming every so often. Flying, with Fisher singing, sadly and softly. Flying, with her own heart crying out.

            Hiding, in the shadow of massive cliffs that perhaps once towered over a long gone sea.

            Fighting to fix the damaged wiring and tubing to the air filtration system, Barry’s voice in her ear coaching her through the decision, scolding her as she turns his lab upside down looking, desperately looking for just the right pieces.

            Sleep riddled with dreams of her family, her family only as she’s seen them die.

            Flying, over grounds that half remind her of the moons from her home.

            Hiding, a shallow cave whose occupant’s bones have long since crumbled to dust.

            Struggling to mend the rather more organic modifications that Merle has made over the course of decades to his irrigation and maintenance systems for the greenhouse.

            Forcing herself to chew half-burnt food nowhere near as good as most of what she’s eaten for 64 years, whispered teasing yet kind jokes about her cooking abilities from the twins dancing in her ears.

            And onward.

            And so, Lucretia watches the Light fall, silently. Even now, even here, it’s beautiful.

            _So. Right over there, huh, Lucy?_ She can practically feel the slight give of the railing as Magnus rests his arms on it, still wobbly even after her frantic patch job sixteen hours earlier.

            “Yep. Fell right over there.” She reaches out to point. It seems almost close enough to touch.

            _You gonna go get it?_

            Lucretia hesitates.

            _Listen. Listen. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. Lup wouldn’t either._ Taako has taken Magnus’s place. _It’s a, uh, pretty shit plane right here. Kinda makes you wonder if it even deserves to be saved._

            “But we - _I_ \- can’t let the Hunger get any stronger, not when I can help it. It’s not about literally the worst plane ever. It’s about us and the choices _we_ make, and about not letting John Hungryman win.”

            _Never shoulda told him about that nickname._ Merle doesn’t sound sad though, just reflective. Maybe even content. _He was not a fan. Killed me pretty damn quick over it, ya know?_

            “You said. I’m sorry.” Lucretia whispers.

            _No, don’t be, don’t be. Can’t change what’s in the past. Just what’s ahead, ya know?_

            “I don’t want to save it.”

            _And, I mean, you don’t have to! Right now, you’ve got to take care of you, however you can. Because there won’t be a lot of time for that ahead. It’s about doing what you have to do to survive. It’s about doing what you have to do for yourself._

            Lucretia gives a rueful sigh, almost side-eyes the dwarf. If she does it, she can almost pretend that he’s just out of the corner of her vision. “Why do I get the distinct feeling that you just convinced me?”

            The Merle in her mind shrugs. _‘S your thoughts, Lucretia._

            Lucretia sets a course toward the Light of Creation.

 

* * *

 

            It’s then that she encounters the first group of people outside the faceless officers who have been her pursuers.

            She’s so astonished to see _people_ that she almost misses the suspicious, threatening way they view her as she approaches. Almost. She’s known the twins too long for that.

            “Who are ya? Ya some kind of new officer?” One who appears to be the leader looks at her and then spits.

            “No, no, I’m not… I’m not with them.” She holds her hands up in a gesture of peace. She wishes for Merle, so capable of befriending anyone, any enemy. “I, I’m here for… listen, I’m here for a thing that would have fallen a few hours ago, a bright light-”

            They bristle at that, save for the leader. “Whatcha want with that?” The leader continues, though their tone is calculatingly relaxed, body coiled like a snake preparing to strike. Lucretia wishes for Taako and Lup and Barry and the mongoose family.

            She forces herself to straighten up, as she did the first day, shoulders squared, chin high and set. “I’m here for what I call the Light of Creation.” She says, in a voice learned from Davenport. “In one year’s time, an enemy far greater than anything you have seen before, the end of everything, will be here. And if you don’t hand the Light over to me, to get it the _fuck_ out of this plane, this enemy, the Hunger, will consume this entire plane and everyone with it.”

            There’s some murmuring, some awestruck and horrified, some hissing and suspicious. Lucretia stands her ground, set like an oak tree or perhaps like Magnus. The leader steps forward, and the whispers die down. “Them’s some strong words. Convincin’ words. But, uh, where’s yer proof?” They spit again.

            “I have stories from the 65 times this has happened before. My own plane, my own home, was consumed just like yours will be.”

            “And ya didn’t save it?”

            “We didn’t _know_.”

            “We?”

            Lucretia freezes for a moment, a Firbolg caught in the campfire light. “M-my family. My family and I. We have been traveling together for 64 years now, and this has happened every year. Every cycle.”

            “And, uh… where are _they_?”

            “They’re dead.” She says shortly. “One of those ships came and took them.”

            They don’t ask how she’s certain that her family is dead. For as surely as Lucretia knows her family and the Starblaster and the bond engine, they know the world they are living in. “So the judges are interested in ya… that’s _very_ interesting.”

            Lucretia’s drawn her wand before she even realizes it. “I am _here_ for the _Light of Creation_.”

            “Well, uh, no need to, uh, go pointin’ a _stick_ at anyone.” They look at her wand, unimpressed, and Lucretia spares a moment to wonder how magic works here. It would be a fascinating study. In any other world, at any other time. “We’re just havin’ a lil conversation, that’s all. Now, uh, sweetheart, uh, what’s your name?”

            Lucretia is smart, smart enough to know that these people would trade any information, anything they have on her the moment it gives them the slightest advantage in this world. Hot diggety shit, maybe even for spite, too, hardened as they are in this too hard world. “Marlena,” she answers, seeing the light of their fire glint off of the glasses of an imaginary Barry as he nods in approval at her quick thinking, borrowing his mother’s name.

            “Now, uh, Marley then, you, uh, you seem real set on this fancy lil light thing. And listen, we’re but a simple folk, so we got no real need for it either. Tell ya what, we’ll trade ya.” Lucretia doesn’t respond. “You got a real nice ship there.”

            And then Lucretia is running, running from this desperate group who will have more light for one year than perhaps they have known their entire lives. Running from these attempted thieves and murderers who will just as surely be extinguished as the rest of this miserable plane when the Hunger finally comes.

            Lucretia makes it to the Starblaster, the bond engine coming to life as soon as she enters, courtesy of her slapdash remote activation system, assembled with Barry and Magnus’s tinkering in mind and triggered as she knocks aside the wooden duck she’d so carefully placed earlier.

            Even so, a grappling hook as cobbled together as some of her repairs has already caught onto one of the pieces of metal that never really set properly. The leader is anchoring it on the ground, glowing with magical energy.

            Lucretia doesn’t hesitate. She points her wand, uttering a single word learned from studying with Barry, and the leader of the vagabonds crumples over, dead.

            Lucretia and the Starblaster escape.

            She doesn’t go back for the Light of Creation.

 

* * *

 

            Lucretia has sort of lost track, over the past few months, of the timing of the days, running, fighting, repairing, eating, and sleeping whenever she is able.

            As such, it’s not at all unusual to find her, four months into her miserable stay on this plane, executing repairs on the Starblaster at the sort of hour that Taako would refer to as the asscrack of night (also an hour at which point Barry might finally consider going to sleep).

            As she works on the ship’s overall power system, Lucretia is humming a variation on the song that Davenport had sung at Legato, a variation that always come back to the same steady hum of the Starblaster’s bond engine

            _You’ve become quite skilled at this_. Davenport sounds proud.

            Lucretia, however, snorts. “You get good at a lot of things when you have to.”

            _Whether the skill is born of necessity or simply desire for knowledge doesn’t matter, Lucretia. You’ve learned a lot. I’m proud. We all are._

“You’re not here though.” The words slip out softly, like a sigh. And Lucretia immediately tenses, the screwdriver in her hand slipping its grip on the screw for a moment. In moments like these, in these imagined conversations to keep herself grounded and keep the bonds alive, she never dares admit the truth.

            _Now, careful, careful there_. Davenport ignores the remark. _You’ll damage the screw._

            “I know. Trust me, went through enough of them.”

            _Where’d ya get more, Lucy?_ Magnus asks conversationally. _I know it wasn’t Fisher._

            “I, uh, may have… raided one of the roving bands. Earlier today.” Despite her solitude, despite the fact that there is no one around for miles, Lucretia self-consciously tugs her sleeve down over the bandage on her arm. They don’t need to know about that part.

            _Oh hell yeah, Creesh. Our little sis is getting’ all dangerous now. Give us the deets._ Lup nearly sings, arm around a smiling Barry.

            “Well. I kind of had to.” Lucretia gives them a sheepish smile in her mind, downplaying the adventure, surprisingly one of the more fun moments she’s had so far. Despite the injuries.

            _Knew we’d make a rebel out of you yet, Cretia._ Taako sounds satisfied. _So, uh, listen, you, uh, gonna explain?_

            “I mean, I was _about_ to tell you the story.”

            _Well, I meant the grievous bodily harm that naturally Merle isn’t around to heal-_

_HEY!_

_But, uh, the story’s good, too._

            Lucretia laughs. “So, what happened was-” And she launches into the story for her family, who, even now, even gone, are helping to carry her through this year so she can bring them back to her.

 

* * *

 

            In the past eight and a half months, Lucretia has become quite talented at avoiding both the officers’ ships, ever vigilant in their quest to track her down, like some sort of rare bird to add to their collection of trophies, as well as the roving bands of marauders, ever opportunistic and eager to steel the ship out from under her. It’s not that she’s ever at ease during one of these instances or indeed at any point in this whole year, but she overall feels competent in her ability to deal with them.

            That being said, she’s never dealt with both groups at the same time.

            Lucretia is outpacing a group of marauders and their ship, even more patchwork than that Starblaster in its current state, held together with magic, duct tape, will power, and a good number of Taako’s hairpins. She’s easily dodging their shots, almost lulled back to her usual level of tension rather than the level she operates at during a fight.

            And then a much bigger shot passes right in front of the bow of the ship, momentarily blinding Lucretia with its brightness. She’s veering away even as she’s blinking spots out of her vision; she knows exactly which ships are capable of that kind of firepower. And just how important it is to get out of range as quickly as possible.

            Another blast comes from the other side, and Lucretia veers back, cursing in Common, in Elvish, in Dwarvish, in Gnomish, and in a handful of other languages picked up over the decades. Two of them. At least. Fuck. Okay. Okay. Lucretia can handle th-

            She jerks the Starblaster upward, flying higher than her typical escape altitude. Okay. Three. Possibly more. At once. With a crew of marauders on her tail.

            It’s a good thing she’s spent what little time she has reviewing her own descriptions of some of the aerobatic stunts Davenport has executed in the past. Her journals of this year remain mostly abandoned beneath the useful ones of years past, with nothing to draw, and her words mostly notes about how to keep the ship moving.

            “Hold on, Fisher!” Lucretia calls, brushing back flyway white hair, eyes wide and hands steady.

            And Lucretia flies.

 

* * *

 

            Lucretia jolts awake, for a moment disoriented and unable to pinpoint just what sound has woken her. Not the unmistakable whir of the officers’ ships, nor the less refined, clanking approaching of cobbled together battlewagons from the marauders. Nor even a scream from Fisher, alerting her to a more subtle approach, nor their quiet crying as they miss Magnus.

            No.

            It’s silence that has awoken Lucretia.

            She throws herself up to standing out of the nest of blankets, stolen from her family’s rooms to keep them close, on the bridge’s bench that has been her bed for maybe three months now, as too often has she sprinted from her room up to the controls to race the ship away from the next threat or assess the next problem. She looks around wildly, blinking in the surprisingly dark space, stumbling to the controls.

            The bond engine is silent. The ship is dead.

            But how? The Starblaster had given Lucretia no warnings; indeed, the various blinking warnings and screaming alarms and blood-curdling shrieks from the bond engine stressed beyond its limits have been comparatively quiet as of late, an impossible lull in an even more impossible year.

            Lucretia frantically goes through her regular startup sequence, fingers now just as dexterous and sure with the controls as they are with her pens. Nothing. She goes through her emergency sequence that will bypass all of the non-necessary systems, allowing her time to escape and figure out the problem. Nothing. She goes through the sequence she’s only had to use once before, discovered in that same emergency that called for it, that will disable everything save for the engine itself, granting her one brief sprint that allowed her to escape from a whole fleet of ships.

            Nothing.

            Lucretia slumps over the controls. Is this it? But she was so _close_. Just a few more weeks. She’d actually been looking forward to the apocalypse because it had meant escape from all this.

            “Please,” she whispers, her voice a croak. She has not let it grown as such from disuse, instead still maintaining those imagined conversations with her family, but it is tight now, with exhaustion and fear. “Please. I was so close. I learned to fly. I learned to fix. I learned to fight. Please.”

            Fisher hums from their tank, also quickly and carefully carted  and secured up here, so Lucretia would not grow too lonely. They don’t seem worried. Perhaps they do not understand.

            “I failed. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” For the first time in a long, long time, what feels like centuries but has only been months, Lucretia allows herself the time to cry, previously deemed a luxury and a waste she could not afford. “Lup. Taako. Magnus. Merle. Barry. Davenport.” She starts repeating their names to herself, softly, both an apology and one last, desperate attempt to remind the Starblaster of the bonds that bring it to life and that have forged Lucretia into the far stronger person she is today.

            She’s sure it won’t work. _It has to_. She’s sure. _Come on, don’t give up on us now._ It can’t work.

            _We’re not giving up on you._

            There’s a soft noise from the bond engine.

            _Come on, Lucy, you know us better than that._

Another.

_Yeah, Cretia, you know yourself better than that._

A longer whine, and then a purr.

_And, Creesh, you’re still stronger than you know._

The engine stutters, but it’s louder.

_You’ve come so far already, Lucretia._

It’s trying, it’s trying, it’s fighting, and it’s _winning_.

_You’re almost through._

The bond engine roars to life, and Lucretia is still crying, tears of joy.

            She’s almost through. Her family is almost home.

 

* * *

 

            It’s time.

            Lucretia has been watching for the signs, and, even here, it’s noticeable. The world has grown colder, grayer. The people have grown colder, harder. And their attempts to catch Lucretia? That much more difficult to evade.

            But Lucretia has grown as well, and she can fight this.

            Even with the gray skies, the unnervingly still storm that is the imminent harbinger of the Hunger is noticeable to one for who has seen this many times before.

            The Hunger has only grown stronger as it consumes more planes and takes in knowledge from Merle. It strikes quickly, rapidly, wreaking its absolute devastation upon an already wrecked world.

            But Lucretia has grown as well, and she will win.

            She flies, fights, soars like a bird, onward and upward. Her heart is racing, her breaths too fast and too shallow, but she’s almost there, she’s almost through, and-

            They’re back. _They’re back_. She did it. _She did it._

            Lucretia slumps, back against the bridge, panting as she looks at her family. They look perfect. Well, Magnus has a black eye and Merle a scratch, but they are here and they are whole. And they are looking at her in confusion.

            Lucretia begins speaking, and for the first time in a year, her family is around to truly hear her words. “I made it. I made it. They tracked me down, and I got away on the ship, but they kept following. For a year I ran and I hid and I had to fight and I had to repair the ship in secret. I had to _learn_ how to repair the ship; I was the only one. If I died too- I don’t even know _how_ to fly the ship. I fucking made it.”

            And there will be time enough for her story, time enough for her family to hear how Lucretia was tested and broken and still she reforged herself into something far stronger. Time enough for them to see the changes for themselves, to see their fierce, confident, decisive chronicler.

            For now though? Lucretia falls into the embrace of the family she never stopped fighting for.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!
> 
> So I wrote and edited all of this within the past six hours because you gotta take advantage of the motivation when it's there, right? Also, I made myself tear up writing this if you can believe it.
> 
> Kudos and comment and I love you forever.
> 
> Leave a message after the beep at [charmandhex](https://charmandhex.tumblr.com) because I swear I'm starting chapter 11 soon.


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